Published: Constable, 2002
When one things of the British royal family in the later nineteenth century, the immediate image that comes to mind is that of the perpetually mourning Queen Victoria; perhaps secondly there are the mistresses of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Less well known is the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, because he never actually succeeded to the throne, dying of influenza in 1892. The career of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (known informally as Prince Eddy) was much more scandalous than that of his father - he is a candidate for the most badly behaved royal in British history, a post for which there is a fair amount of competition. It has even been suggested that he might have been Jack the Ripper.
Goodnight Sweet Prince, the first in Dickinson's series of Lord Francis Powercourt detective novels, takes the death of Prince Eddy as its starting point, to weave a conspiracy theory to rival the wildest stories that concern the death of Princess Diana a decade ago (and one not mentioned in the Wikipedia article referenced above). In Dickinson's fictionalisation, the influenza was a story dreamt up as a cover for the murder of the prince, portrayed as a hedonistic bisexual syphilitic bent on debauching everybody with whom he came into contact; and the subject of blackmail paid by his father. Clearly, an excellent and popular choice of murder victim, and yet someone whose death requires careful and discreet investigation. Working out which of the various motives actually led to the killing is the main point of the story.
As a novel, Goodnight Sweet Prince is somewhat uneven. The title, for instance, takes a sarcastic tone alien to the rest of the narrative - and Prince Eddy is no Hamlet! The first few chapters are a little dull, enough to make me consider giving up reading the book; but in the end I felt that I enjoyed the novel. The mystery is interesting, the background well researched, and the scandal appeals in the way that conspiracy theories in general tend to - fun, no matter how far fetched.
Showing posts with label Jack the Ripper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack the Ripper. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 May 2007
Tuesday, 5 December 2006
Kelley Armstrong: Broken (2006)
Published: Orbit, 2006
The sixth of Armstrong's supernatural thrillers in the Otherworld series, Broken again centres on werewolf Elena (the novels alternate main characters). Though pregnant, she agrees to undertake the theft of the famous "From Hell" letter associated with Jack the Ripper from the grandson of the magician who stole it from the Metropolitan Police Ripper files. However, an accident leads to the establishment of a dimensional portal in Toronto by a spell set up to protect the letter, through which come Victorian zombies and various nasty nineteenth century diseases. The bulk of the novel describes the efforts made by Elena and the werewolf pack to close the portal.
This is apparently the last of Armstrong's supernatural novels for a while; judging by the preview of her next one which appears at the end. (This seems to be an obligatory part of American genre novels nowadays.) Armstrong's official site lists another Otherworld novel, but that is also a bit different, as it has a different central character from any of the earlier ones.
It is probably a good thing to make changes like this. The author with whom Armstrong is most likely to be compared, Laurell K. Hamilton, wrote about eight of the Anita Blake novels without such a change, all concentrating on and narrated by Anita, and after about six the quality starts to drop, descending into self parody. The novels now consist almost entirely of Anita finding some amazing new power, and having some violent sex - and it is a fairly good rule that any novel where there are sex scenes over a hundred pages long has something wrong with it. However, it has always been true for me that Hamilton is a guilty addiction, while Armstrong is more of a pleasure to read: better written, but not as intense an experience.
The Ripper connections are interesting, if not really deep - and Armstrong doesn't trawl through the more macabre details in the way that some writers about the killer do. Most readers are going to know something about history's most infamous serial killer, so reminders of the specific details needed in the plot are all that are needed, and are all that we get. This is still a novel drawing strongly on the horror genre, though perhaps "supernatural thriller" would be a better category for it: there are more scary episodes of Buffy. In fact, this whole seriesou would probably be enjoyed by any fan of that show; it is definitely better written than any of the Buffy tie-in novels (not that that would be hard).
The sixth of Armstrong's supernatural thrillers in the Otherworld series, Broken again centres on werewolf Elena (the novels alternate main characters). Though pregnant, she agrees to undertake the theft of the famous "From Hell" letter associated with Jack the Ripper from the grandson of the magician who stole it from the Metropolitan Police Ripper files. However, an accident leads to the establishment of a dimensional portal in Toronto by a spell set up to protect the letter, through which come Victorian zombies and various nasty nineteenth century diseases. The bulk of the novel describes the efforts made by Elena and the werewolf pack to close the portal.
This is apparently the last of Armstrong's supernatural novels for a while; judging by the preview of her next one which appears at the end. (This seems to be an obligatory part of American genre novels nowadays.) Armstrong's official site lists another Otherworld novel, but that is also a bit different, as it has a different central character from any of the earlier ones.
It is probably a good thing to make changes like this. The author with whom Armstrong is most likely to be compared, Laurell K. Hamilton, wrote about eight of the Anita Blake novels without such a change, all concentrating on and narrated by Anita, and after about six the quality starts to drop, descending into self parody. The novels now consist almost entirely of Anita finding some amazing new power, and having some violent sex - and it is a fairly good rule that any novel where there are sex scenes over a hundred pages long has something wrong with it. However, it has always been true for me that Hamilton is a guilty addiction, while Armstrong is more of a pleasure to read: better written, but not as intense an experience.
The Ripper connections are interesting, if not really deep - and Armstrong doesn't trawl through the more macabre details in the way that some writers about the killer do. Most readers are going to know something about history's most infamous serial killer, so reminders of the specific details needed in the plot are all that are needed, and are all that we get. This is still a novel drawing strongly on the horror genre, though perhaps "supernatural thriller" would be a better category for it: there are more scary episodes of Buffy. In fact, this whole seriesou would probably be enjoyed by any fan of that show; it is definitely better written than any of the Buffy tie-in novels (not that that would be hard).
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